The original concept behind The Passion of Christ, so I understand, was that the film would have no subtitles. Audiences would have been presented with a film entirely in Latin and Aramaic and left to make sense of it.
It was an interesting concept. Most people know the story well enough to follow the plot. Faced with a collage of images, music and sounds, audiences would have been left to project an exact meaning onto the words pronounced by the actors. At a few key points, audiences may have been able to pick out a recognizable phrase.
Mel Gibson has been mocked by historians for having the Roman soldiers, and even Jesus, speak Latin rather than Greek. This is, indeed, a historical inaccuracy.
However, I do not see the film as an attempt to take us back to the first century --- rather, it is an attempt to take us back to the Middle Ages. The woman Veronica who wipes Jesus' face, the meeting with his mother while he carries the cross and his falling three times to the ground all come not from the Biblical account of the crucifixion, but from the medieval Catholic service of devotion known as the Stations of the Cross. Further details, such as the appearance of Satan in the Garden of Gethsemane, and the scene where Pilate's wife presents cloths to Mary, with which she wipes her son's blood, are provided by The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, a series of visions narrated by Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824).
When Pilate pronounces, in Latin, the words "Ecce homo" --- "Behold the man," although historically it may be incorrect, the words echo with resonance for anyone with roots in the medieval Latin tradition. Even for those who lack a knowledge of Latin --- especially for those who lack such a knowledge --- attending the film would have been like attending a Roman Catholic service in the days when Latin was still the customary language: a dimly understood mystery, illuminated by striking visual images and haunting music.
This is, of course, precisely what many critics have found worrying about the film: that it harks back to the anti-semitism of the Catholic Church before Vatican II. Amongst the phrases that are not given sub-titles is Matthew 27, verse 5, "His blood be on us and on our children." This verse has been interpreted to mean that the whole Jewish race could be held responsible for the death of Jesus, an absurd deduction with tragic consequences.
Paradoxically, this verse only appears in Matthew's Gospel, which is also, paradoxically, the most Jewish Gospel (for example, in no other Gospel does Jesus say "Do not think I have come to destroy the law and the prophets; I have not come to destroy but to complete" --- Matthew 5, verse 17). At about the time that Matthew wrote his Gospel, the following prayer was being adopted in synagogue worship:
"For the apostates, let there be no hope, and may the kingdom of the arrogant be quickly uprooted in our days; and may the Nazarim and the Minim instantly perish; may they be blotted from the book of the living, and not be written with the righteous."
The Nazirim are thought by most scholars to be Jewish Christians. It would, of course, be impossible for any Jewish Christian to say this prayer without calling down a curse upon themselves --- Matthew's curse can then be seen as part of a bitter dispute within a Jewish community.
In common with all the Gospel writers, Matthew wants to reassure his readers that no right-thinking Roman governor would have ordered the execution of Jesus; his condemnation by a Roman governor must be presented as a mistake to avoid incurring the wrath of the empire. Faced with the task of explaining why the Roman governor executes Jesus he presents Pilate, a man in high office who recognizes that he is failing in his responsibility to higher ideals of truth and virtue, as a moral coward. This is hardly the picture of Pilate that is painted by contemporary authors such as Philo, who wrote of:
"... his continual murders of people untried and uncondemned, and his never ending, and gratuitous, and most grievous inhumanity."
But whether or not the weak Pilate of the Gospels is the real Pilate, it is a compelling portrait that has caught the imagination of Christians through the ages. For this picture of an anguished Pilate to work as an example of moral cowardice, the Jewish priests must be presented as conniving to pressure him into executing Jesus. If we reject the Gospel accounts of Jesus's trial as inaccurate, with what do we replace them? Historians can tell us that what is written is unlikely, but they cannot tell us what really happened. Mel Gibson chooses to base his script on the Gospels rather than historical speculation. So, is the result anti-semitic?
Geza Vermes, the eminent Jewish historian, comments in his review of the film:
"Anti-semitism is not in the New Testament text, but in the eyes and in the minds of some of its readers....
"Gibson has repeatedly asserted that neither he, nor his film, is anti-semitic. The real problem is not with his attitudes or avowed intentions, but with the lack of appropriate steps taken to prevent visual images from inspiring judeophobia."
Certainly, the priests' dress is a continual visual reminder that they are Jewish, and Mel Gibson outdoes the Gospel writers in portraying them as villains (for example, by having Ciaphas, the high priest, mock Jesus on the cross, saying words that the evangelists attribute to anonymous figures in the crowd). On the other hand, Simon of Cyrene, who helps Jesus carry his cross, wears a kippah, a strong visual reminder of his Jewish identity, and is abused by the Roman soldiers for being a Jew. This, in turn, leads Simon to bond with Jesus --- when they carry the cross together, it can be seen as a moment of Jewish solidarity. Incidentally, he departs from Emmerich at this point --- she describes Simon as a pagan.
In any case, whatever the visual cues, the intelligent viewer will be aware that most of the sympathetic characters are Jewish, including Jesus and his mother, who emerges as a strong presence. The most moving moments in the film involve belong to her, as she strokes the ground in the court-house, seeming to sense his presence in the dungeon below, as the sight of her son falling under the weight of the cross reminds her of him falling as a child, and as she holds his dead body and weeps --- the classic pose of the Pieta. After Peter betrays Jesus, he kneels before her in shame. She reaches out to comfort him, but his shame is too great and he runs away.
This is Mary as she figures in the iconography of the Catholic Church: the mother of mercy, always ready to offer forgiveness. Yet she is also a little uncertain of her role, ready to forgive Peter, but unsettled by his reaction. It is as though we see her learning to become an icon. Mary appears by the foot of the cross only in the Gospel of John, where she is silent throughout. She is not an actor in the drama, only an observer.
This makes her ideal as a character in Gibson's film. She is a role model for the audience: she hates what she sees, but cannot turn away, she wants to intervene, but is powerless --- all she can do is let her emotions flow.
The film's emphasis on the physical demands a visceral reaction. It is a film that demands feeling rather than thinking. Indeed, as soon as one starts to think about the film, one faces a question that is never answered: why is all of this happening?
No motive is given for the priests' hatred of Jesus. We know he has done something to offend them, but we are never quite sure what. Nor are we ever offered a clear account of Jesus's own motives.
The film starts in the Garden of Gethsemane. Satan confronts Jesus and tells him that he is taking on too much. One man cannot bear the weight of the sins of the whole world. So, we are at least given a theological explanation of Jesus's death: it is necessary for our salvation.
Fans of the film say that they come away with a deep sense of gratitude --- "He did that for me." However, although the story is presented within a theological framework, this is theology-lite. How does one man's death remove the sins of the world? What is the link between Jesus' death and my forgiveness? Christian theologians have offered some profound answers to this question, but the film ignores them. The atonement is taken as a fact that requires no explanation. We know what we are supposed to feel, but we do not know why.
The film lacks a meaning. Does this matter?
In principle, I think the answer is "no." Kieslowski's The Double Life of Veronique is one of my favorite films. One critic, whose name I forget, dismissed it as being very beautiful, but lacking in meaning. My response was "Who says it has to mean anything?" Do we need to know the meaning of Beethoven's seventh symphony, or is it sufficient that through listening to it, one can achieve a moment of transcendence? The Double Life of Veronique does not need to say anything to justify itself. Its beauty is all the meaning that it needs.
However, The Passion of the Christ does not hit the same heights as The Double Life of Veronique. Why does it never quite induce --- in me at least --- a moment of transcendence?
First, I think that the film fails to live up to what is offered by the Gospels. We learn that Jesus stands for love and truth, and that he is against evil. However, these are just so many vague phrases if no further explanation is given. If all we know of Jesus is that he preached love, we understand nothing of why he inspired hate, and nothing of the challenge that his teaching poses for us today. The teaching of Jesus does make us think, but the film manages to make his message seem banal. I have emphasized how heavily the film draws on medieval imagery, but contrary to popular opinion, the Middle Ages were a time when Christians knew how to think as well as to feel, when faith was united with understanding. Gibson's sentimentalism is more 19th century than first century.
Secondly, the film also fails to create a sense of mystery, perhaps because the physical torment and the supernatural intervention are all presented so explicitly. Nothing is left to the imagination --- always a big mistake. Some works of art manage to achieve that moment of transcendence, a sense that one is in contact with a truth that is too profound for words. In the case of The Passion of Christ, I am inclined to wonder whether the words are perhaps the problem: we hear too little to have an explanation, but too much to suggest a mystery.
Mel Gibson might have made a masterpiece if he had only followed his initial instinct and released the film without subtitles.
Ben Murphy teaches Philosophy and Religious Studies at Florida State University - Panama
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